Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we are here on this conflict we have over a Supreme Court nominee, which has turned into a considerable, unprecedented fuss, I believe, for a fairly simple reason. The elephant, so to speak, in the room is that the Court has become a political actor under Chief Justice Roberts. The rightwing bloc on the Court delivered politically because it had a 5-to-4 majority. Now their rightwing majority is gone, and Republicans are predictably upset. Justice Frankfurter admonished: But it is not the business of this Court to pronounce policy. It must observe a fastidious regard for limitations on its own power, and this precludes the Court's giving effect to its own notions of what is wise or politic. Well, that was then. The five-judge bloc on the Roberts Court, of which Justice Scalia was an essential part, systematically and predictably pronounced policy in favor of three things: No. 1, conservative ideology; No. 2, the welfare of big corporations; and No. 3, the electoral well-being of the Republican Party. And people noticed. Linda Greenhouse wrote that it is ``impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Republican-appointed majority is committed to harnessing the Supreme Court to an ideological agenda.'' Other noted Court watchers, such as Norm Ornstein and Jeffrey Toobin, agree.…”